WHEN some students found $43,000 in cash stuffed inside an old couch bought from a second-hand store, they had a moral dilemma on their hands: Whether to keep the money for themselves or find the original owner.

Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti and Lara Russo, all students in New Paltz in upstate New York, found the stash in the couch picked up at a Salvation Army for $20.

At first they discovered a plastic wallet containing a wad of twenties totalling $750 under the couch’s arm.

A further investigation revealed more envelopes and much more money.

“I almost peed,” Mr Werkhoven told the local student paper, The Little Rebellion. “The most money I’d ever found in a couch was like fifty cents. Honestly, I’d be ecstatic to find just $5 in a couch.”

Couch time...The three roommates enjoy some TV time on their lucky couch. Picture: WLNYSource:Supplied

After thinking things over they decided they decided they should probably give the money back (let’s face it, if they hadn’t you probably wouldn’t be reading this).

“We had a lot of moral discussions about the money,”Ms Russo said. “We all agreed that we had to bring the money back to whoever it belonged to… it’s their money — we didn’t earn it. However, there were a lot of grey areas we had to consider.”

On one of the envelopes they discovered a woman’s name and after phoning her up it was revealed that the money was hers.

The woman, who declined to be named, said it was cash she had saved up after her husband had died. She said that the money had gone missing after her children sold the couch to a second-store when she was forced out of her home due to ill health.

The paper reported that the woman gave $1070 to the students as a reward for returning the stash.

The lucky couch... Three roommates found thousands of dollars stuffed into this couch they recently got from a nearby Salvation Army. Picture: WLNYSource:Supplied